


Through the window (three scenes from an alternate universe)

by redjacket



Series: live by love [2]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, I'm fixing my own fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 15:49:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17963483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redjacket/pseuds/redjacket
Summary: Steve was alive. That was all that mattered.(If Steve survived the fire.)





	Through the window (three scenes from an alternate universe)

**Author's Note:**

> This will make absolutely no sense to you if you don't read chapter three of [though the stars walk backwards](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237561/chapters/41164676)

[“Diana!” Maya screamed.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237561/chapters/41164676)

[ Diana sprinted to her side, the scene so chaotic that no one noticed she was there between one blink and the next. Maya was climbing out of the back of an ambulance, her face streaked with tears. Everything smelled terribly of smoke. ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237561/chapters/41164676)

[ Sandy was inside the ambulance, an oxygen mask on her face. ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17237561/chapters/41164676)

“She’s okay. They’re taking us to the hospital. She’s going to be okay,” Maya said. She had Diana’s hands and gripped them so tightly that it would have left bruises on anyone else. “They’ve already left with Steve. He was worse.”

The rush of hope was so strong, Diana felt lightheaded from it. “Where?”

“Memorial,” Maya told her. “He’s bad, Diana.”

Diana ran. She thought later she must have flown to get there as quickly as she did. But she had no memory of it. She only remembered needing to be there as swiftly as possible and then hovering in the doorway of his hospital room.

Diana remembered the night Steve had shown up at her door, drunk, on Nick’s birthday. She remembered it all too well. She remembered how small he had looked when he wedged himself into the corner beside the couch because the impulse to protect himself was overwhelming even when he was in no danger.

Maybe that’s why he didn’t look smaller in the hospital bed. Why he still felt so present.

But he looked terrible. He was still intubated and there were cuts and bruises on his face. One hand was bandaged and the other was immobilized by a cast. There was still soot on his face.

(The roof had started to cave in so he couldn’t get out the same way as the girls. He had stumbled to the back bedroom and managed to break the window. He had jumped from it before the smoke overwhelmed him. He had cracked two ribs and broken his arm when he landed.)

Diana gingerly touched his arm where it lay limply on the bed, careful of the bandages, of the IV.

Steve did not wake but his eyelids fluttered at her touch.

Diana laughed, tears leaking out of her eyes. She bent her head to kiss his forearm. She could feel the thrum of his pulse in his wrist.

He was alive. That was all that mattered.

\--

Diana hated it when she had to stay late at work unexpectedly.

She knew it was not entirely reasonable. She had no reason to worry. It was an echo left behind from that terrible time with the fire. She knew that Steve would be fine.

(“I’m fine,” Steve had said, earlier, sounding fond. “No heroics, I promise. I’ve got my hands full anyway.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can,” Diana told him. She knew she was more worried than was warranted but... “It will still be some time.”

“It’s fine,” Steve said again, he sounded distracted now and Diana could hear a crash on the other end of the line. “Have to go. Kick some ass. Love you.”

“I love you too,” Diana said. She never missed an opportunity to say it.)

Still, the later it got the more she longed to be home.

If was dark when she finally left the Louvre. She should have walked home, she could have picked up something for dinner on the way on the off chance they had time for a meal, just the two of them.

She did not. She barely checked to see if anyone was watching before she took a shortcut down an alleyway and leapt...

And arrived on their balcony. Steve had left it unlatched for her. They used to always keep it unlatched, for this reason and for others, after the fire, although Steve had found it difficult sometimes.

But their circumstances had changed, since then.

Their apartment was quiet and dark. Diana walked through it silently, not wishing to disturb. She went down the hallway and peaked into the first bedroom she passed.

Lyta, their daughter, had thrown off all the covers again. Her face was crinkled into a scowl, blonde brows pulled down fiercely, chubby little cheeks and mouth pressed into a pout. Though she had none of his reasons to, Lyta slept like her father. She was always in motion, even when she was resting, their little tornado.

Diana untangled the blankets and pulled them up again. Lyta grabbed a fistful of them at once, rolling over and getting tangled up again immediately. Diana smothered a laugh before she smoothed them out again and kissed her daughter’s forehead.

She stepped back into the hallway, closing the door silently behind her. There was lamplight in the crack under the nursery door. She took the last few steps to it.

Steve lifted his head up when the door opened. He was wearing a t-shirt with a hole in the collar and his hair looked as if Lyta had been attempting to brush it again. But his smile was soft when he saw her and he was holding their son in his arms.

Nick did not notice her arrival. He stayed wholly focused on his bedtime bottle.

“Hey,” Steve said, keeping his voice pitched low. Nick was a fussy eater and he had almost finished the whole bottle. “Did you kick ass?”

It was unexpected enough that Diana snorted and then covered her mouth when Nick made a displeased noise but didn’t stop eating. She crept farther into the room, close enough to try to smooth Steve’s hair back into place and for him to tilt his head up and steal a kiss without disturbing their son.

“The new opening is on track once more,” Diana told him. “Have they behaved well today?”

Steve’s shoulders shook momentarily with his suppressed laughter.

“No, they were little terrors as usual,” he grinned at her, his head still tilted back. Diana was struck, as she had been many times before, of how full of love her heart could feel without bursting. “They take after their mother.”

“I think you bear some responsibility for that as well,” Diana said with mock severity.

Steve’s grin only widened and Diana leaned forward again to kiss it when Nick decided he was finished with his bottle with his characteristic abruptness and immediately began to fuss.

Steve handed him off to Diana with long-practised ease. He cast around for something to throw over her shoulder for the inevitable burp up and when he found nothing, he sighed, pulled his shirt off and used that instead.

“Laundry tomorrow,” he said as Diana smirked at him. He leaned in to steal back their thwarted kiss, if only briefly, because Nick did not like to be crowded, or share his mum, and wailed a little louder.

Steve stepped back to let her finish burping him. Diana was mostly focussed on burping Nick and getting him to settle down but she could see Steve stretching out his arm. It went stiff on him sometimes, a lingering effect of the fire.

(The other was a new set of nightmares.

“Because the old rotation was getting boring,” Steve had said, his voice still hoarse, three months after he had come home from the hospital, when they were still living in New York.

He had been leaning into her side, his forehead pressed against her shoulder, his face haggard and exhausted. He hadn’t had more than a few hours sleep in days, at that point, the flare up of his PTSD  — they were finally calling it by it’s name  — quieter but worse than after the mess with Barbara Ann.

Diana kept an arm anchored solidly around his shoulders. With the other hand, she brushed her fingers over the bruises under his eyes. Steve sighed and sagged into her a little more, his head sinking down to her collarbone. She gathered him closer.

“Do you want to try a sleeping pill?” Diana asked. She always asked, no matter how much she thought it was necessary, no matter how much Steve needed to sleep. She never took away his choices.

“No,” Steve said, then groaned and acquiesced. “Yes.”

“Dr. Rosenbaum said to give them another week,” Diana said, because she knew Steve didn’t like the side effects of the ones he was currently prescribed. Before the fire, he hadn’t needed them for over a year. “Before you switch to something else.”

“I know,” Steve said.

It took him another few minutes for him to drag himself away from her so Diana could go get it but he took it without question and they tried laying down again. Diana kept an arm around him, kept him close, and Steve tried to settle with his head against her shoulder. He kept shifting, unable to stop, until the sleeping pill made him too groggy.

“Least I was used to the old ones,” Steve mumbled, his eyelids drooping inexorably.

Diana kissed his forehead and ran her fingers through his hair, trying to soothe him. The trauma from the fire had snuck up on them in the way it taken hold and become ingrained. For all that the aftermath of the incident with Barbara Ann had been swift and acute, it had been abrupt.

But the other, biggest difference was Steve’s willingness to lean on her. His impulse had always been to isolate himself before.

They had that on their side now.)

Nick burped, cried, barfed a little on her shoulder, and then settled. He chewed on his fist and her hair for a little longer, trying to keep himself awake, before his body went slack and heavy in her arms.

Diana and Steve exchanged a glance. Nick was their little trickster. Diana walked him around the room for another ten minutes before she tried to put him down in his crib.

They both breathed a sigh of relief when he waved his arms in clumsy protest of being put down but stayed asleep.

Steve snagged the monitor as they tiptoed out, through the adjoining door into their own room. They both sat down heavily on their bed. Steve groaned, stretching his neck back and forth.

He looked at her and flicked the collar of her blouse. “He still managed to get you.”

There was spit up on her shirt. Of course. “Tomorrow is laundry day.”

“Mmm,” Steve flopped back onto their bed. “Means I didn’t have to take my shirt off.”

“I appreciated the view,” Diana said and laughed at the face Steve made at her. She flicked him in the side before he could say anything negative about getting old.

Steve scowled but got the message, saying instead: “I would say you could at least return the favour but I think I’m too tired.”

Diana peeled off her blouse and threw it in the direction of the laundry hamper before turning back to look at him. She almost smirked at the flare of heat in his eyes before she leaned down to kiss him, slowly this time. Steve’s hands slide down her back, finding the clasp of her bra.   

Diana was not sure why but she found herself almost giddy for a moment. She pulled away from Steve’s lips to look at him, his hair, dappled with grey around the edges, even more thoroughly mussed, his eyes intent and turning slightly questioning.

She loved him so.

“I would say,” Diana said, feeling playful and very much in love and wanting to tease him. She could not keep a straight face. “Do you want to make another baby?”  

(It had been a surprise to find out she was pregnant. They had not been trying. They had been talking about a job offer Diana had received from the British Museum and Steve had been in a place where they thought the move would be okay.

And then Lyta had come along, Hippolyta for her mother, and they stayed until she was a year and a half old, because Diana had wanted to be close to Maya during her pregnancy and when Lyta was a baby.

She was glad she had. She had missed her after they moved to France so she could take a position with the Louvre, especially when she was pregnant with Nick. Sandy came to stay with them for a month in the summer and Maya came at the end for another two weeks but it was not the same.

Diana did not regret the move, she loved their life together, but it was not the same.)

“No,” Steve objected, immediately, but he was laughing. “We have enough little monsters in the house already and Sandy gets here in two weeks. No. Nope.”

Diana fell to the side, giggling. It struck her as absurdly funny. She thought she might be more tired than she had anticipated  — she had been gone the past two nights aiding rescue efforts after one building, then another, collapsed due to the unstable catacombs beneath them.  

Steve followed her, grinning, and propping himself up on his elbow. She could tell he was fighting the urge not to laugh as well.

“No more babies,” he reiterated. There was a mischievous glint in his eye that Diana loved even though she did not get to see it as often as she would have liked. “We can go to sleep, because I think you need it, or we can, hm, pretend.”

It was not that funny  — Diana still found it hilarious. Steve cracked in the face of her giggles, giving in to laughter as well, and Diana could not resist tangling her fingers in her hair and pulling him down, savouring the taste of the laughter in his mouth.

\--

“We have to stand together.”

Diana sighed, looking away from Bruce, back towards her car.

She felt her lips twitch against her better judgment. She had told Steve to stay put, that she would only be a moment, and he understood, better than anyone, the duty and the obligation that drove her.

He had  _ mostly  _ stayed put. He had gotten out of the car, and was leaning against it, waiting for her.

She looked at Bruce again, in all his torment and said: “Some of us have things we must protect.”

She could feel his surprise, feel his dismay and confusion as she stepped away. When he did not follow, she turned to look back at him and said. “Come. There is someone you should meet.”

She could tell he was following her reluctantly but he did follow her. From the corner of her eye, she saw the moment he recognized who she was leading him to, saw the way he stiffened in shock. Steve’s hair had gone completely silver-grey years ago and his face was lined now. But he was still recognizable.

Steve looked bemused at their approach. The way he looked at Diana was knowing and fond, as if he had guessed this would happen.

“Bruce,” Diana said. “This is Steve Trevor.”

Steve extended his hand. Bruce looked at it but didn’t take it. He was immediately suspicious.

“You’re not old enough,” Bruce said bluntly.

Steve chuckled. “That’s not usually what I get these days.”

“The last surviving World War One veteran died four years ago,” Bruce said. “You look like an older version of the man in the picture with Diana but you would have to be what 120 years old to be him? This isn’t funny. If you’re tricking her — ”

Steve’s eyebrows were climbing high on his forehead. He looked torn between being offended and laughing in Bruce’s face.

“Bruce, Steve Trevor is the man in the photo. This is Steve Trevor,” Diana said. “He is not the man in the photo. Although he is, as well.”

Steve gave her an exasperated look. Bruce looked like he had decided that Diana was in need of protecting and Steve was some kind of charlatan.

“Diana, I don’t know what story he’s told you — ” Bruce began, turning to her.

“Hey, she found me,” Steve interjected. He had apparently had enough. His face had taken on one of his more bullish expressions. “And it was thirty-seven years ago, so I must be pulling one hell of a long con.”

Diana put her hand on Steve’s arm, not to restrain him, but in support.

“My  _ husband _ ,” Diana stressed and saw Bruce’s eyes widen. “Speaks the truth. I was the one to recognize him.”

Bruce did not look satisfied but he changed tactics. “So, you’re what? His son?”

There was a sneer in his voice. This time it was Diana who stiffened.

(She had had time, with this Steve. They had a whole life together.

That did not mean she did not remember the boy who had died in her arms or her lost love who had died saving the day.

They were and were not the same. Their losses meant no less because she still had Steve beside her.)  

“When the Steve Trevor I met in 1918 died, he was the last of his family line,” Diana said. “When I met again in 1943, he was the last surviving member of his family. That line died with him as well.”

Steve touched her back, briefly, because he knew how she carried those aches with her still. “It’s not like Nick looks much like me, either.”

Nick had his father’s eyes and his smile. He had his easy charm and his powers of observation and his ability to look into a fridge and assemble something delicious in under an hour.

Diana thought he had Steve’s kind heart as well; Steve said he had hers.    

(Lyta had his golden hair, his chin, his nose and blue eyes, as well. She had Diana’s cheek bones. Steve insisted she had Diana’s smile and all her grace and stubbornness and especially her right hook.)

“Who is Nick?” Bruce asked, the disbelief and almost-derision in his voice still.

“Our son,” Diana said, moving a step closer to Steve. His arm slipped around her waist automatically.  

Bruce looked momentarily flummoxed. “I don’t understand.”

Steve laughed. “Buddy. Welcome to the club. It’s a lot easier if you don’t dwell on it.”

Diana poked Steve, who had no standing to say that to anyone, before explaining: “This is the third life of Steve’s where I have known him.”

“And he always looks the same?” Bruce asked, he looked like he was still trying to wrap his head around the idea. “With no genetic link?”

“None that we could determine,” Diana said. “And yes, he may be older or younger, but he is always the same.”

She could tell Steve wanted to give her a look for that, that he still saw the differences, mostly negative, between himself and the other lifetimes she spoke of. But he didn’t, not in front of Bruce. Steve had always been good at hiding his struggles from other people.

“And you remember these — ” Bruce made a face. This was not something he wanted to believe was true. “Past lives?”

Steve wrinkled his nose. “I remember bits of the first one.”

(He had remembered more bits and pieces of the first time she had known him. Never everything, never the second time she had known him.

Just fragments.

It was enough.

If he had never remembered anything, it would have been enough, just him being there with her. Diana had learned that.)

Bruce pinched the bridge of his nose. “Reincarnation was not a factor I had considered.”

To Diana’s surprise, for just a moment she saw hopeless longing in his eyes. It startled her how much it reminded her of Steve, in those terrible days before he had accepted help and they had found the best ways to treat his PTSD.

“Are there others?” Bruce asked.

Steve looked at Diana helplessly and she knew he had recognized Bruce’s expression too.

But they could not give him the answer he yearned for.

“If there are, we have not found them,” Diana said, gently. “I have only ever known Steve to return.”

“We don’t know why,” Steve added. He shrugged. “Wouldn’t know where to start looking for the answer to that.”

(There was an element of, as Steve would say, not looking a gift horse in the mouth in leaving the questions of why and how Steve had come back to her unsought.    

Recently, they had been talking around the edges of it. Steve was spry for his age and healthy, despite all the stress and suffering he had had in his life, but he wasn’t  _ getting _ old anymore, he  _ was _ old and there were days when he felt it.

Diana had caught him watching her one day, soon after his sister had died, with such sadness in his eyes.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Steve told her when she came to sit beside him and take his hand. “But there’s going to be a day when it’s not up to us anymore and it’s going to be sooner than I would like.”

Diana knew it, no matter how much she hated the thought. She looked down at their joined hands  — his were wrinkled now. Hers had stayed the same.

“We were never going to have enough time,” Diana said and when she looked at him, there were tears in his eyes. “You would have to live forever for it to be long enough.”

Nothing could ever be long enough but Steve had lived. Their life together was good. He had seen their children grow up. He had held their grandchildren. And the spectre that hung over them had not descended yet.

He kissed the back of her hand. “I wish I had met you earlier. If I can, if it’s up to me, I’ll come back to you again. I’ll always come back. I don’t care what I have to go through to do it. I belong with you.”)

Bruce didn’t visibly react to that answer. If anything, he went more stoic and still.

Diana thought that was answer enough.

“But there are others like you,” Bruce stated, refocusing on what he could control.

Diana and Steve exchanged a look. The involvement of their children, both of whom had inherited various aspects of her divinity and one of whom had a family of his own, would be their choice alone. Diana would not allow it to be anyone else’s.

But she had heard and seen rumours of others and Bruce had obviously read the files he had passed on to her.

“Yes,” she said. “You have seen as much of them as I have from Luthor’s files.”

Bruce nodded. He was sinking into his own plans again. Steve’s presence was merely a minor division to him.

“We still have to find them,” Bruce said.

Diana had a sinking feeling in her heart: “The others like me. Why did you say they’ll have to fight?”

“Just a feeling.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo...as it turns out, I couldn't let go of Steve #3 either and had to write this what if he survived ficlet. It feels very self indulgent but I don't care. 
> 
> Also, I know I contradict "though the stars walk backwards" in terms of more people than Steve being reincarnated. That's because the information Steve and Diana have in this is limited. If Steve doesn't remember all his previous past lives, they have no way of knowing that he's not the only one who gets reincarnated. 
> 
> At least, they wouldn't until someone else was as well.


End file.
